Labour Rights Protection and Its Enforcement Under the

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Labour Rights Protection and Its Enforcement underthe USMCA: Insights from a Comparative Legal Analysis

Maria Anna Corvaglia

School of Law, The Liberty Building, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UKEmail: [email protected]

(Received 21 April 2020; revised 14 February 2021; accepted 20 February 2021; first published online 29 July 2021)

AbstractChapter 23, exclusively dedicated to labor protection, has been widely described as one of the most dis-tinctive features of the new US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA). This paper challenges the currentnarrative surrounding the USMCA by critically analysing Chapter 23 of the agreement, looking at the legalinnovative design of its substantive commitments of labour protection and their enforceability. In light ofthis objective, a comparative analysis will be conducted. The provisions of Chapter 23 USMCA will becompared with labour provisions in previous US Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), namely, theNAFTA side agreement on labour rights and the TPP. Second, a comparative analysis will be conductedcomparing USMCA Chapter 23 with labour provisions in EU Trade Agreements negotiated with USMCAparties. The paper demonstrates that although the USMCA does not radically innovate from the level ofsubstantive labour protection reached in recent US and EU PTAs, the enforcement mechanism in theUSMCA is significantly strengthened, with controversial and innovative features.

Keywords: Trade agreements; labour rights; US Trade Policy

‘Each new agreement is another opportunity to innovate.’Morin, Pauwelyn and Hollway, 2017

1. IntroductionOne of the most striking differences between the new US–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA)and the original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) consists of the inclusion of aspecific ‘Labor Chapter’ (USMCA Chapter 23). USMCA Chapter 23 sets ambitious goals andbinding commitments to respect international instruments of labour rights protection and tonot lower labour standards to attract trade and investments. Moreover, USMCA Chapter 23 offersvarious enforcement mechanisms for its labour commitments, significantly strengthened in the‘Protocol of Amendment to the Agreement’ signed in December 2019. After its ratification inthe US Senate, former President Trump described the USMCA as ‘the largest, fairest, mostbalanced, and modern trade agreement ever achieved’, while US Trade Representative RobertLighthizer praised it as ‘the first agreement that contains strong, enforceable labor… standardsthat will help to level the playing field for American workers’. During the 2020 USPresidential Elections campaign, then Democratic Presidential candidate Biden also supportedthe signing of the USMCA because of its innovation in terms of labour provisions.1 Thispaper takes a closer look at the rhetoric around the USMCA and asks itself the following

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1www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-20/biden-says-he-supports-usmca-citing-provisions-for-labor.

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question: Are we indeed recording in this agreement the most innovative and advanced system oflabour protection established in a Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA), as described by the pre-vious US administration? It will answer this question by critically analysing the USMCA, lookingat its contribution in terms of legal innovation in the adoption of labour rights obligations incomparison to other PTAs.

As the USMCA was only signed a little over a year ago, there has obviously been little legalscholarship so far on the labour provisions in this agreement. Having said that, a few short pieceson the USMCA by lawyers have been published, and these positively welcome the inclusion of anentire chapter fully focused on the adoption of labour commitments in the body of the agree-ment. Santos, for instance, states that even though much more needs to be done to ‘rebalancethe power between capital and labor in trade agreements’, the USMCA ‘may signal a pivot toa new model requiring reforms of domestic labor law and other issues important to workers’,2

while Ganz concludes that ‘[the USMCA] can be expected to bring about significant changesto labor in Mexico’,3 Notwithstanding the interesting insights that these contributions provide,their main focus is on labour law reform in Mexico and the obstacles related to the enforcementof labour provisions in the US. On the other hand, the primary focus of this paper is on the legalinnovation and the design of labour provisions in the USMCA from a comparative perspective.That is, this paper will provide a detailed comparative analysis of the content of the labour provi-sions in the USMCA and a select number of other PTAs as an essential step to further developingthe debate on the innovative design of the USMCA.4

There is, of course, a wider body of scholarly work on the trade–labour nexus, including onlabour provisions in PTAs. This research is mostly conducted by economists and political scien-tists and has focused on issues such as states’motives behind the inclusion of labour provisions inPTAs,5 the influence of and role played by trade unions and political parties in putting labourissues on the PTA negotiating agenda,6 as well as the tension that exists between the choice toinclude labour provisions in PTAs versus dealing with them at the multilateral (WTO, ILO)level.7 There is also a growing body of legal work that has looked at the impact and the imple-mentation of these labour provisions in PTAs, with some arguing that such provisions in PTAs(in particular those signed by the EU) could be effective in improving labour conditions,8 whileothers are more skeptical and find little evidence of such improvements in labour standards andconditions.9 As important as this work on the drivers behind and the impact of the inclusion of

2Santos, Á. (2019) ‘Reimagining Trade Agreements for Workers: Lessons from the USMCA’, AJIL Unbound 113, 407–412.3Gantz, D.A. (2019) ‘The United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement: Labor Rights and Environmental Protection’, Mexico

Center, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, 13 June 2019), 19–13.4For a discussion on environmental provisions in the USMCA, see Laurens, N., Z. Dove, J-F. Morin, and S. Jinnah (2019)

‘NAFTA 2.0: The Greenest Trade Agreement Ever?’, World Trade Review 18(4), 659.5Milewicz, K., J. Hollway, C. Peacock, and D. Snidal (2018) ‘Beyond Trade: The Expanding Scope of the Nontrade Agenda

in Trade Agreements’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 62(4), 743–773.6Raess, D., A. Dür, and D. Sari (2018) ‘Protecting Labor Rights in Preferential Trade Agreements: The Role of Trade

Unions, Left Governments, and Skilled Labor’, The Review of International Organizations, 143–162.7Brown, D.K. (2001) ‘Labor Standards: Where Do They Belong on the International Trade Agenda?’, Journal of Economic

Perspectives 15(3), 89–112.8Postnikov, E. and I. Bastiaens (2014) ‘Does dialogue work? The Effectiveness of Labor Standards in EU Preferential Trade

Agreements’, Journal of European Public Policy 21(6), 923–940. Campling, L., J. Harrison, B. Richardson, and A. Smith(2016) ‘Can Labour Provisions Work beyond the Border? Evaluating the Effects of EU Free Trade Agreements’,International Labour Review 155(3), 357–382. Velluti, S. (2016) ‘The Promotion and Integration of Human Rights in EUExternal Trade Relations’, Utrecht Journal International & European Law 32, 41.

9Van den Putte, L. and J. Orbie (2015) ‘EU Bilateral Trade Agreements and the Surprising Rise of Labor Provisions’,International Journal Comparative Labour Law & Industrial Relations 31, 263. Marx, A. and J. Soares (2015) ‘DoesIntegrating Labour Provisions in Free Trade Agreements Make a Difference? An Exploratory Analysis of Freedom ofAssociation and Collective Bargaining Rights in 13 EU Trade Partners’, in J. Wouters, A. Marx, D. Geraets, andB. Natens (eds.), Global Governance through Trade: EU Policies and Approaches. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing,158–184. Kamata, I. (2016) ‘Labor Clauses in Regional Trade Agreements and Effects on Labor Conditions: An Empirical

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labour provisions in PTAs is, that is not what this paper is interested in. As indicated earlier, thispaper undertakes a detailed comparative legal analysis to assess the legal innovation of the designof labour provisions in the USMCA. This is not to say that there is no other legal scholarship onlabour rights and PTAs, yet most existing legal accounts were written quite some time ago10 andhence do not account for more recent developments, or they analyse the topic mainly from ahuman rights law perspective.11

In other words, the existing work summarized above has greatly enhanced our understandingof various aspects of labour provisions in PTAs, yet the issue of legal innovation and the exactdesign of labour provisions in PTAs from a comparative legal perspective has not receivedmuch attention. To be sure, there is other work on the design of norms in PTAs,12 includingsome excellent recent mapping exercises and databases on labour provisions in PTAs,13 yetthis work does not provide the kind of detailed analysis of the legal innovation of the designof labour obligations in PTAs that is provided in this paper. Moreover, the existing work by law-yers on conceptualizing and framing innovative legal solutions in PTAs, which this paper is inter-ested in, has so far mainly looked at environmental commitments.14 One particularly interestingfinding of this latter body of work for the purpose of this paper is that USMCA countries arethose that most value and cultivate legal innovation in the negotiation of their PTAs, especiallyas regards the inclusion of sustainable development and environmental concerns.15

Building on the methodology developed by Horn, Mavroidis, and Sapir,16 this paper’s analysisis also supported by the recent mapping efforts developed in the World Bank’s Deep Integrationproject.17 Within the WTO-X policy areas not covered by WTO Agreements, this paper analysesthe labour provisions in the USMCA and its legal innovation profile by looking at two importantcomponents of this agreement: its substantive labour protection commitments and their enforce-ability. As such, this paper aims to create a first step toward exploring the research for a morecomprehensive study of legal innovation in the inclusion of labour commitments in PTAs.

In terms of the scope of this analysis, the level of legal innovation in the USMCA labour chap-ter will be tested in the North American context. That is, the paper compares the labour

Analysis’, Institute of Developing Economies (IDE). Tran, A.N., J. Bair, and M. Werner (2017) ‘Forcing Change from theOutside? The Role of Trade–Labour Linkages in Transforming Vietnam’s Labour Regime’, Competition and Change 21(5), 397–416.

10Polaski, S. (2003) ‘Protecting Labor Rights through Trade Agreements: An Analytical Guide’, U.C. Davis JournalInternational Law and Policy 10, 13–25.

11Bartels, L. (2013) ‘Human Rights and Sustainable Development Obligations in EU Free Trade Agreements’, Legal Issuesof Economic Integration 40, 297–314. Bartels, L. (2016) ‘Social Issues: Labour, Environment and Human Rights’, inB. Mercurio and L. Bartels (eds.), Bilateral and Regional Trade Agreements: Commentary and Analysis, Vol. 1 (2nd edn.).Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 364–384.

12Dür, A. and E. Manfred (eds.) (2015) Trade Cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baccini, L., A. Dür,and M. Elsig (2016) ‘The Politics of Trade Agreement Design: Revisiting the Depth–Flexibility Nexus’, International StudiesQuarterly 59(4), 765–775. Acharya, R. (ed.), Regional Trade Agreements and the Multilateral Trading System. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

13Ebert, F.C. and A. Posthuma (2011) ‘Labour Provisions in Trade Arrangements: Current Trends and Perspectives’, IILSDiscussion Paper Series 205/2011, ILO, Geneva, www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---inst/documents/publication/wcms_192807.pdf, 11. Raess, D. and D. Sari (2018) ‘Labor Provisions in Trade agreements (LABPTA): Introducing a NewDataset’, Global Policy 9(4), 451–466.

14Pauwelyn, J. (2014) ‘At the Edge of Chaos?: Foreign Investment Law as a Complex Adaptive System, How It Emergedand How It Can Be Reformed’, ICSID Review 29(2), 372–418. Morin, J.F., J. Pauwelyn, and J. Hollway (2017) ‘The TradeRegime as a Complex Adaptive System: Exploration and Exploitation of Environmental Norms in Trade Agreements’,Journal of International Economic Law 20, 365–390.

15Morin, Pauwelyn, and Hollway (2017) ‘The Trade Regime as a Complex Adaptive System’, 365–390. 377.16Horn, H., P.C. Mavroidis, and A. Sapir (2010) ‘Beyond the WTO? An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade

Agreements’, The World Economy 33(11), 1565–1588.17Raess, D. and D. Sari (2020) ‘Labor Market Regulations’, in A. Mattoo, N. Rocha, and M. Ruta (eds.), Handbook of Deep

Trade Agreements, World Bank, 583–605.

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provisions in the USMCA with those in a select number of other PTAs signed by the NorthAmerican countries. Two types of agreements will be used for the legal comparison.

First, the provisions of USMCA Chapter 23 will be compared with labour provisions in keyprevious US PTAs. More precisely, the USMCA will be compared with the NAFTA side agree-ment of the ‘North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation’ (NAALC) to study how thelabour protection system evolved between the North American Parties. Even if bearing evidentshortcomings, the literature has agreed on the centrality of NAFTA as an influential and innova-tive model of labour protection,18 as many subsequent US PTAs have mirrored some of theNAALC’s regulatory features and its mechanisms of institutional cooperation.19 Aside fromNAFTA, USMCA Chapter 23 will also be compared to Chapter 19 of the Trans-PacificPartnership (TPP) (presently known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement forTrans-Pacific Partnership or CPTPP). Even though the US subsequently decided to withdrawfrom the agreement, the original text of TPP Chapter 19 has been described in the literatureso far as ‘the culmination of a progressive trajectory of linkage between trade and labor intrade agreements’.20 Moreover, the more recent literature has also argued that the USMCA exten-sively borrowed from the text of the TPP, albeit including significant regulatory differences.21 Thesimilarities between the two agreements will be tested in the specific context of labour rightsprotection in this paper.

Second, a comparison will be made between USMCA Chapter 23 and the results achieved interms of the level of protection and enforcement in those chapters dedicated to labour protectionin the EU trade agreement with the USMCA Parties.22 More precisely, the ‘Trade and Labour’ chap-ter in the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), which provisionally enteredinto force on 21 September 2017 between the EU and Canada, will represent a focal point inthe comparison, together with the chapter on ‘Trade and Sustainable Development’ of the EU–Mexico Agreement agreed in principle on 21 April 2018.23 The rationale for including an analysisof EU PTAs with USMCA partners is that it will allow to further test the claim that labour provi-sions in the USMCA are as innovative as asserted. The comparison shows that, apart from the pres-ence of the dispute settlement mechanism in the US model of PTAs, the substantive commitments

18Weiss, M.S. (2002) ‘Two Steps Forward, One Step Back – Or Vice Versa: Labor Rights under Free Trade Agreementsfrom NAFTA, through Jordan, via Chile, to Latin America, and Beyond’, University of San Francisco Law Review 37, 689.Bieszczat, F.H. (2008) ‘Labor Provisions in Trade Agreements: From the NAALC to Now’, Chicago-Kent Law Review 83,1387, https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol83/iss3/11.

19Rogowsky, R.A. and E. Chyn (2007) ‘US Trade Law and FTAs: A Survey of Labor Requirements’, Journal of InternationalCommerce and Economics 1, 24, www.ilocarib.org.tt/trade/documents/other_agreements/trade_law_ftas.pdf.

20Santos, Á. (2018) ‘The Lessons of TPP and the Future of Labor Chapters in Trade Agreements’, in B. Kingsbury, D.M.Malone, P. Mertenskötter, R.B. Stewart, T. Streinz, and A. Sunami (eds.), Megaregulation Contested: Global EconomicOrdering after TPP. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 140.

21An impressive 57% of similarities has been found between the USMCA and the TPP texts. Alschner, W. andR. Panford-Walsh (2019) ‘How Much of the Transpacific Partnership is in the United States–Mexico–CanadaAgreement?’, Ottawa Faculty of Law Working Paper No. 2019-28, https://ssrn.com/abstract=3410658 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3410658.

22There are at least three types of EU agreements: free trade agreements, economic partnership agreements, and associ-ation agreements. The CETA is a comprehensive free trade agreement while the EU–Mexico is technically an associationagreement; however, for the purpose of this paper we will simply refer to ‘EU Preferential Trade Agreements’ as referringto the entirety of those. For more information, see Kuijper, P.J., J. Wouters, F. Hoffmeister, G. de Baere, andT. Ramopoulos (2013) The Law of EU External Relations: Cases, Materials, and Commentary on the EU as anInternational Legal Actor. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

23In 2016, the EU and Mexico began the re-negotiation process for the modernization of the EU–Mexico GlobalAgreement, the comprehensive agreement that entered into force in 2000 for goods and 2001 for services. A political agree-ment in principle for the modernization was reached on 21 April 2018, where only the list of public procurement covered ismissing. More information is available at: https://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/in-focus/eu-mexico-trade-agreement/agreement-explained/index_en.htm.



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of labour right protections in the USMCA text do not innovate or differ from the substantive labourcommitments guaranteed in the EU–Mexico and EU–Canada Agreements.

Grounded on the comparative analysis presented here, this article will argue, first, thatUSMCA Chapter 23 does not radically innovate on the level of labour protection reached inthe NAALC and consolidated in subsequent US PTAs, like the TPP. Moreover, the level of labourprotection offered in the USMCA is not unlike the standards reached in the latest EUPTAs with Canada and Mexico. Second, the paper will demonstrate that the most innovativeaspect of the USMCA consists of the enforcement mechanism of its labour commitments,significantly strengthened in the USMCA Protocol of Amendment. Not only are the possibilitiesof challenging a violation of labour rights via a formal dispute settlement system improved butspecific bilateral mechanisms are also included to ensure the enforcement of the right of freeassociation and to collective bargaining in US–Mexico and Canada–Mexico bilateral relations.However, the strengthening of the enforcement of the labour rights commitments in theUSMCA is not immune to criticisms and significant implications, as highlighted in the finalpart of the paper.

2. Substantive Labour Commitments in the USMCA: Following a Consolidated PathAs a first step of the comparative analysis, the USMCA’s substantive commitments of labour pro-tection will be studied under different aspects. First, the coverage of USMCA Chapter 23 will beanalysed, looking at the specific labour rights and the standards of working conditions guaran-teed in the text. Second, the level of the commitments will be studied, analysing the depth of thecore substantive commitments imposed on the signatory Parties. An important aspect of thecomparative analysis will be the reference to ILO Core obligations, mainly the labour rights com-mitments covered in the ILO 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Right to Work.Moreover, the presence of additional substantive commitments will be taken into consideration,referring to clauses on corporate social responsibility, gender equality in the workplace, and theprotection of migrant workers. Afterward, the analysis will move on to the mechanisms availablefor enforcing the labour commitments in the agreement, precisely the design of the disputesettlement systems and its channels for institutional cooperation among the Parties.

2.1 USMCA Coverage and the Reference to ILO Core Conventions

With a view to deepening the knowledge of the USMCA’s regulatory design of labour protection,the first step of this paper’s analysis will focus on the coverage of USMCA Chapter 23. Five mainareas of labour considerations define the coverage of the USMCA provisions, as introduced in the‘Definitions’ of Article 23.1 and reaffirmed in the commitments set forth in Article 23.3 on ‘LaborRights’. The core areas of labour protection explicitly guaranteed are the following: (1) the pro-tection of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining; (2) the elimination of allforms of forced or compulsory labour; (3) the abolition of child labour, and labour protections forchildren and minors; (4) the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occu-pation; and (5) the protection of acceptable conditions of work with respect to minimum wages,and occupational safety and health.

In terms of areas of coverage, the USMCA does not seem to deviate from the scope of labourprotection previously established in the NAFTA framework and in more recent US PTAs. First,there is a strong similarity between the labour issues explicitly covered in USMCAChapter 23 andthe list of 11 ‘Labor Principles’ as clarified in NAALC Annex 1. NAALC Annex 1 includes a spe-cific reference to freedom of association and the protection of the right to collective bargaining,prohibition of forced labour and child labour, along with the elimination of employment discrim-ination on the basis of race, religion, age, sex, or other grounds, and the guarantee of equal pay for




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men and women.24 Second, even more evident similarities can be observed in the case of the TPPagreement. The coverage in the labour protection reached under USMCA Chapter 23 appears tobe a precise transposition of the definition of the scope of TPP Chapter 19, entirely dedicated tothe protection of workers’ rights. TPP Article 19.3 identifies the exact same five areas of labourrights as stated in USMCA Article 23.3 as the main content of its labour commitments.

It is interesting to note that these five core areas of labour rights included in the definition of thecoverage in the USMCA (in Articles 23.1 and 23.3) and the TPP (in Articles 19.1 and 19.3) agree-ments refer to the fundamental principles and rights at work officially recognized in the ILODeclaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998).25 Both the USMCA and TPPagreements explicitly include a reference in the text to the 1998 ILO Declaration on Rights at Work.

However, the reference to international instruments of labour rights and, in particular, to the1998 ILO Declaration on Rights at Work represent one of the major differences with the NAFTAframework and the less recent US PTAs. It was only after the signature of the 2009 US–Chile PTAthat international standards of labour rights protections began to be explicitly included in USPTAs.26 Previous agreements were modelled around the commitment to ‘enforce your owndomestic laws’, a cornerstone in the NAALC’s labour rights commitments. The lack of any ref-erence to international labour standards was due to the omission of the United States’ ratificationof many ILO Core Conventions and other international standards of workers’ rights.27

In the USMCA text, the importance of international standards of labour rights is also re-affirmed in Article 23.2 on ‘Statement of Shared Commitments’, referring to the 2008 ILODeclaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, something that represents an innovationif compared to the TPP.28 However, USMCA Article 23.3 makes it clear that the binding commit-ments imposed on the USMCA Parties only refer to the 1998 ILO Declaration on Rights at Work.It is interesting to note that the scope of the 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice is

24More precisely, the NAALC already included gender-specific labour commitments aimed at the elimination of employ-ment discrimination based on sex (in NAALC Article 7) and with the objective of ensuring equal pay for women and men (inNAALC Article 8).

25The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998) advocates the protection of the followingcore principles (Article 2): freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining; the elim-ination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour; the effective abolition of child labour; and the elimination of discrim-ination in respect of employment and occupation. These fundamental principles are embodied in eight core ILOConventions, as identified by the ILO Governing Body: Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to OrganiseConvention, 1948 (No. 87), Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98), Forced LabourConvention, 1930 (No. 29) (and its 2014 Protocol), Abolition of Forced Labour Convention, 1957 (No. 105), MinimumAge Convention, 1973 (No. 138), Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182), Equal RemunerationConvention, 1951 (No. 100), and Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111). The text ofthe 1998 ILO Declaration is available at www.ilo.org/declaration/thedeclaration/textdeclaration/lang--en/index.htm. For amore extensive analysis of the 1998 ILO Declaration, see Kaufmann, C. (2007) Globalisation and Labour Rights: TheConflict between Core Labour Rights and International Economic Law. Hart Publishing.

26All the PTAs signed during the Obama Administration (namely the PTAs with Colombia, the Republic of Korea,Panama, and Peru) have highlighted the binding requirement to adopt and to respect the labour rights in the 1998 ILODeclaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. For more information, see Elliott, K.A. (2011) ‘Labor Rights’,in J.P. Chauf and J.C. Maur (eds.), Preferential Trade Agreement Policies for Development: A Handbook. Washington DC:World Bank, 431.

27Elliott, K.A. (2012) ‘Labour Standards and the TPP’, in C.L. Lim, D.K. Elms, and P. Low (eds.), The Trans-PacificPartnership: A Quest for a Twenty-first Century Trade Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 204. Weissbrodt,D. and M. Mason (2013) ‘Compliance of the United States with International Labor Law’, Minnesota Law Review 98, 1842.

28The 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization reaffirms the values included in the 1998 Declarationand advocates for the promotion of a fair globalization based on the concept of ‘Decent Work’. More precisely, it encouragesILO Member states to develop their own economic policies based on four strategic objectives, “employment, social protection,social dialogue, and rights at work” in an integrated manner (Article I). The text of the 2008 ILO Declaration is available atwww.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---cabinet/documents/genericdocument/wcms_371208.pdf. See Maupain,F. (2009) ‘New Foundation or New Façade? The ILO and the 2008 Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization’,European Journal of International Law 20, 823–852.



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considerably broader if compared to the 1998 Declaration.29 Compared to the 1998 ILODeclaration on Rights at Work, the 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice embraces a widerrange of ILO Core Conventions, not all ratified by the United States. The 2008 ILODeclaration on Social Justice emphasizes the importance of the following additional ILOConventions as a governance priority for the Signatory Parties: the Labour InspectionConvention, 1947 (No. 81), the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122), the LabourInspection (Agriculture) Convention, 1969 (No. 129), and the Tripartite Consultation(International Labour Standards) Convention, 1976 (No. 144). Of those ILO Conventions, theUS is a Signatory Party only of ILO No. 144 Convention, having yet to express the intentionto ratify any of the others.30

In terms of coverage of substantive standards, the EU trade agreements also seem to generallyconverge their system of labour protection around the core principles included in the 1998Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and beyond the ILO Conventionscovered by the Declaration.31 Together with the 1998 ILO Declaration, CETA binds its Partiesto the promotion of the objectives set out in the ILO Decent Work Agenda, in accordancewith the 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (CETA Article 23.3).Moreover, the EU–Mexico Agreement pays particular attention to the implementation of the2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization, requiring the Parties to promoteits compliance (Article 3.8) and not to derogate from its fundamental principles for protectionistpurposes (Article 3.7).32 Moreover, both the agreements push their commitments to respect theILO labour standard even further by requiring their Parties ‘to make continued and sustainedefforts to ratify the fundamental ILO Conventions if they have not yet done so’ (CETA Article23.3.4 and EU–Mexico Article 3.4). For an overview, see Figure 1.

Moreover, in addition to these five core areas of labour commitments, additional labour con-cerns are included within the scope of the USMCA, such as the guarantee of acceptable workingconditions and minimum wages, the acknowledgement of the vulnerability of migrant workers(in Article 23.8), the importance of eliminating discrimination on the basis of sex, the promotionof gender equality in the workplace in Article 23.9, and the protection of migrant workers.33

These additional labour concerns were already included in the extensive list of ‘LaborPrinciples’ guaranteed in the NAALC. The only area of labour concern highlighted in theUSMCA provisions but not expressly mentioned in the NAALC text appears to be violenceagainst workers, as later reaffirmed in the USMCA commitments.

These additional labour concerns included in the USMCA’s coverage were also present in theTPP context: the goal of eliminating forced and compulsory labour (in TPP Article 19.6), and theelimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation for migrant workers (in

29For more information, see www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/mission-and-objectives/WCMS_099766/lang--en/index.htm.30For an overview of the ILO Conventions ratified by the United States, see www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?

p=NORMLEXPUB:11200:0::NO::P11200_COUNTRY_ID:102871.31The first EU agreement making explicit reference to the ILO core labour standards is the 1999 FTA signed with South

Africa, introducing an approach consistently followed in the subsequent PTAs. Harrison J., M. Barbu, L. Campling, F.C.Ebert, D. Martens, A. Marx, J. Orbie, B. Richardson, and A. Smith (2019) ‘Labour Standards Provisions in EU Free TradeAgreements: Reflections on the European Commission’s Reform Agenda’, World Trade Review 18, 635, 638–39.

32Article 3.7 of the EU–Mexico Agreement states that ‘Recalling the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a FairGlobalisation of 2008, the Parties note that the violation of fundamental principles and rights at work cannot be invokedor otherwise used as a legitimate comparative advantage and that labour standards should not be used for protectionisttrade purposes.’

33The protection of migrant workers was already highlighted in the NAFTA system of labour protection, in Annex 1.11,invoking the Parties to provide ‘migrant workers in a Party’s territory with the same legal protection as the Party’s nationalsin respect of working conditions’, contrary to its characterization as a completely new provision in the USMCA’s evaluationby the USTR in April 2019. US International Trade Commission, ‘US–Mexico–Canada Trade Agreement: Likely Impact onthe US Economy and on Specific Industry Sectors’, April 2019, Publication Number 4889, Investigation Number TPA105-003, www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub4889.pdf.



https://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/mission-and-objectives/WCMS_099766/lang--en/index.htm.

https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11200:0::NO::P11200_COUNTRY_ID:102871.

https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11200:0::NO::P11200_COUNTRY_ID:102871.

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TPP Article 19.10). A few discrepancies, however, are noted in the coverage of the USMCA andthe TPP. On the one hand, no reference is made to violence against workers under TPP Chapter19, and the concerns over gender equality in the workplace are only briefly mentioned as an areaof future cooperation between the TPP Parties (in TPP Article 19.10.6(n)(ii)). On the other hand,an increasingly important concern of labour protection included in the TPP appears to be miss-ing from the USMCA: the reference to corporate social responsibility (CSR), as will be explainedfurther below.

2.2 Core Substantive Commitments and the Level of Labour Protection Guaranteed in the USMCA

In terms of its substantive commitments, the text of the USMCA seems to depart from the stan-dards of labour protection set in NAFTA and embraces the regulatory achievements of labourprotection reached in the more recent US PTAs.

There are two binding provisions in the USMCA that define the core commitments of labourprotection: namely USMCA Article 23.3 and Article 23.4. Article 23.3 requires that each USMCAParty not only adopts and maintains their respective national regulations of labour protection,but also ensures compliance with the 1998 ILO Declaration on Rights at Work.34 As analysed

Figure 1. Substantive coverage and the ILO declarations

34The standards of labour protection linked to international standards of labour rights extends to all areas of labour rightscovered by the USMCA provision, apart from the respect of minimum wages. Article 23.3 paragraph 2 reserves the right to‘adopt and maintain status and regulations… governing with respect to minimum wages, hours of work, and occupationalsafety and health’ without making any reference to international instruments of labour protection.




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before, Article 23.3 establishes an explicit link between the USMCA and international instru-ments of labour rights, incorporating them into the core of the USMCA commitments.35

Together with Article 23.3, the second binding core commitment is a non-derogation obligation.Article 23.4 binds the Parties to refrain from either weakening or derogating from the enforce-ment of their domestic or international labour regulations within the scope of encouragingtrade and investment.

Now let us compare this to the NAALC. The NAALC simply required the Parties to ‘ensurethat its labor laws and regulations provide for high labor standards, consistent with high qualityand productivity workplaces, and shall continue to strive to improve those standards in that light’,as stated in NAALC Article 2. The wording of the NAALC commitment did not define the mean-ing of ‘high labor standards’, referring only to the respect of domestic labour regulations withoutmentioning international conventions. As specified in Annex 1, the guiding principles includedin the NAALC are ‘subject to each Party’s domestic law, but do not establish common minimumstandards for their domestic law’. Moreover, a non-derogation obligation was not included in theNAALC text. The wording of the core NAALC provisions confirmed its main objectives as tomonitor the implementation of the domestic labour law and to prevent abuse, refraining fromestablishing new regulatory standards or advocating for a harmonization of the labour regulationsamong the Parties.36

If the two main USMCA commitments of Articles 23.3 and 23.4 represent a significantevolution when compared to the NAFTA standards, these provisions do not depart fromthe regulatory standards reached in recent US PTAs and they literally replicate the wordingof the TPP. TPP Article 19.3 and Article 19.4 establish the exact same standards of protectionwith identical language. In other words, the legal innovation of these provisions is quitelimited.

However, aside from the striking similarities with the most recent US PTAs, the USMCA textintroduces important innovations in the regulatory standard of labour protection by providingimportant clarifications of these crucial commitments. More precisely, the footnotes added toArticles 23.3 and 23.4 clarify the scope and the standards needed to prove a violation of theseprovisions. It is interesting to note that the inclusion of these clarifications is something thathas emerged only later in the USMCA negotiating history and in the Protocol of Amendmentsigned by the US, Canada, and Mexico on 10 December 2019, stemming from the discussionon the ratification process in the US Congress.37

More precisely, two are the most relevant clarifications introduced in the Protocol ofAmendment. First, the revised USMCA text commits the Parties to not violate and to not dero-gate from enforcing domestic and international labour protection regulations ‘in a manner affect-ing trade or investment between the Parties’. Footnote 4 of Article 23.3 and footnote 8 of Article23.4 clarify that the impact on cross-border trade and investment for failing to comply with thelabour provisions can be attributed to two separate circumstances: (1) a person or industry pro-ducing goods or supplying services across USMCA Parties, together with a person and industryconducting investments in the territory of the USMCA Parties; and (2) a person or an industrythat produces goods or supplies services in competition with the goods and services of anotherParty.

The second significant improvement consists of shifts in the burden of proof of the core labourprotection provisions. According to the footnotes of Article 23.3 and Article 23.4, a violation ofArticles 23.3 and 23.4 and its effects on trade and investment are always presumed unless proven

35Even if the Declaration itself does not impose binding commitments, the provision in Article 23.3 USMCA requires thatthe Parties ‘shall adopt and maintain in its statutes and regulations, and practices thereunder’ in conformity with the ILODeclaration on Rights at Work and making the rights covered fully enforceable.

36Hufbauer, G.C. and J.J. Schott (2005) NAFTA Revisited: Achievements and Challenges (PIIE), 120.37US Congressional Research Service, SMCA: Amendment and Key Changes’, 30 January 2020, https://crsreports.congress.

gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11391. accessed 3 March 2020



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otherwise by the responding Party. Moreover, the footnotes of Articles 23.3 and 23.4 should beread in conjunction with the text of USMCA Article 23.5 devoted to the ‘Enforcement of LaborLaws’, having footnotes with identical text, which further explained below in this article.

In terms of similarities in their core commitments, the respect of international instrumentsof workers’ rights protection and the non-derogation obligation also represent the two corner-stones of the level of labour protection in EU PTAs, particularly in those agreements concludedwith USMCA countries. However, it is interesting to note the difference with the formulation ofthe non-derogation obligation between the EU and the US model of PTAs. While the CETA(Article 23.4) and the EU–Mexico Agreement (Article 2 XY)38 clarify that the commitmentof non-derogation has three distinctive dimensions. Broader than the obligation in theUSMCA which only commits the Parties to not weaken the level of labour protection, theEU agreements also require refraining from waiving or derogating from labour standardsand requires that no Party shall fail to enforce labour laws ‘in order to encourage trade orinvestment’.

2.3 Additional Substantive Commitments and Their Clarifications in the USCMA Text

In addition to the standards of protection established in the core provisions of Articles 23.3 and23.4, the regulatory content of the USMCA includes additional labour obligations, which have nosimilar reference in the EU PTAs considered.

The strongest of these additional commitments is stated in USMCA Article 23.6: it imposes aban on the import of goods that have been wholly or partly produced using forced or compulsorylabour. The provision asks the USMCA Parties to also establish mechanisms of cooperationbetween them to identify such goods. In its wording, USMCA Article 23.6, as revised in theDecember 2019 Protocol of Amendment, pushes forward the commitments already includedin the TPP but framed in a much softer language.39 The Protocol of Amendment strengthensthe obligation to block access to imported goods produced using forced or compulsory labourand imposes a stronger obligation of results. The revised Article 23.6 removes the original textthat reads ‘through measures it considers appropriate’ as also appearing in the TPP, reducingthe margin of discretion left for the Parties.

Together with the efforts to eradicate forced labour, the importance of establishing betweenthe Parties an environment free from violence, threat, and intimidation against workers isstressed in USMCA Article 23.7. USMCA Article 23.7 appears to be a genuinely new provisionrequiring the Parties to address violence, together with threats of violence, against workersthat could have a potentially negative impact on trade and investment. Violence against work-ers is not a labour concern that frequently appears in US PTAs: neither the NAALC text normore recent US PTAs like the US–CAFTA or the TPP mention any concern about violenceagainst workers, and the only precedent can be found in the text of the US PTAs withColombia and Guatemala. Moreover, it is worth noting that this provision has also beenmodified in the Protocol of Amendment in order to strengthen its enforcement (as shownin Figure 2 below). The original language that required a Party to prove ‘a sustained orrecurring’ pattern of violation has been removed and the burden of proof is also shifted,presuming that a violation of this provision always affects trade unless proven otherwise bythe responding Party.

38In April 2018, the EU and Mexico reached an ‘agreement in principle’ on the agreement that will replace the existingEU–Mexico Global Agreement. The published text may be subject to further modification and negotiations, and it doesnot provide the exact numbering of the provisions. The text of the Agreement in principle can be accessed at https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1833.

39Instead of a ban, as imposed in USMCA Article 23.6, TPP Article 19.6 merely invites the Party to ‘discourage, throughinitiatives that it considers appropriate, the importation of goods from other sources produced in whole or in part by forcedor compulsory labour’.



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Finally, USMCA Article 23.9 includes a commitment of non-discrimination in the workplacewithin the USMCA regulatory framework. Article 23.9 encourages the Parties to implement spe-cific policies to protect female workers against employment discrimination and wage discrimin-ation ‘on the basis of sex (including with regard to sexual harassment), pregnancy, sexualorientation, gender identity, and caregiving responsibilities’.40 Promoting gender equality hasbecome a core priority in most recent EU trade agreements and in Economic PartnershipAgreements on the basis of the EU’s commitments undertaken within the ILO framework toeradicate gender discrimination.41 It is worth noting that the EU Commission regularly conductssustainability impact assessments (SIA) on trade negotiations, taking into serious considerationthe impact of EU PTAs on gender issues.42

However, an increasingly important additional substantive labour concern, traditionally pre-sent in the EU PTAs but lacking in the text of the USMCA, is the reference to CSR commitments.Provisions encouraging the Parties to adopt CSR initiatives aimed at strengthening the respect oflabour rights by corporations (as stated in TPP Article 19.7) are not found frequently in the

Figure 2. Key Changes Introduced in the Protocol of Amendment of December 2019

40The inclusion of provisions on gender equality represents an emerging trend in the negotiation of modern PTAs, par-ticularly evident in PTAs signed by the EU. Monteiro, J.A. (2018) ‘Gender-Related Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements’,WTO Staff Working Paper ERSD-2018-15, 18 December 2018, www.wto.org/english/res_e/reser_e/ersd201815_e.pdf.

41EU Directorate General for Internal Policies, Gender Equality in Trade Agreements, 2016, www.europarl.europa.eu/supporting-analyses.

42The SIA report related to the CETA found positive improvements in the working conditions of women in the sectorsof agriculture and textiles as a result of the agreement, while the SIA related to the previous EU–Mexico Agreement foundin the long run a positive link between trade liberalization and the decrease of gender discrimination in various industries.Ibid.



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labour chapters of US trade agreements.43 The EU and Canada have traditionally been propo-nents of the inclusion of CSR clauses in their PTAs, and the reference to CSR and the sustainablemanagement of the supply chain has been a constant of the EU model of PTAs since the 2008EU–CARIFORUM Economic Partnership Agreement.44 In particular, the EU–Mexico Agreementdedicates Article 9 of its ‘Trade and Sustainable Development’ chapter to the management ofresponsibility in the supply chain, in order to support the promotion of international CSR instru-ments, such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance. However, the US approach to the inclusion ofCSR clauses has been inconsistent over time, overall preferring to include CSR obligations only inthe environmental chapters of its PTAs.45 The text of the USMCA confirm this tendency (includinga reference to CSR only in Article 24.13), marking a significant change with the TPP text.46

3. Enforcement under the USMCA and Its Innovative DimensionIn the literature thus far, different approaches have been developed to study and categories theenforcement mechanisms in PTAs.47 This article directs attention to three dimensions of theimplementation of labour protection in PTAs, particularly evident in the US model of tradeagreements: a judicial dimension, an institutional dimension, and a conditional dimension.

An institutional framework of cooperation among the signatory Parties could be strengthenedby a judicial dimension, with the possibility of recourse to a formal dispute settlement mechanismfor the violation of the labour commitments. The enforceability of the labour obligations via aformal dispute settlement mechanism is one of the most distinct characteristics of the USPTAs, described as a ‘conditional approach’ to labour enforcement, representing a major depart-ure from the EU’s ‘promotional approach’ to the protection of labour rights, mainly focused onbuilding mechanisms of state-to-state cooperation.48 In addition, the practice of requiring add-itional conditions of labour protection during the negotiating phase of its PTAs as a conditionfor the US ratification of the trade agreement has been developed in the TPP.49 This additionaldimension of enforcement has been also included in the USMCA, imposing a pre-ratificationconditionality and a post-ratification enforcement to implement specific domestic reform oflabour protection in Mexico in different Annexes.

The USMCA’s regulatory design embraces all three dimensions in a complex enforcementarchitecture of labour protection. Moreover, the enforcement of USMCA Chapter 23 has assumeda central importance in both the negotiation and ratification processes of the USMCA, subjectedto significant reform in the Protocol of Amendment.

43Ariyaratne, N. (2016) ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership – A Bane or Boon to Corporate Social Responsibility?’, VictoriaUniversity of Wellington Legal Research Paper, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2875152.

44Borlini, L.S. ‘The EU’s Promotion of Human Rights and Sustainable Development through PTAs As a Tool to InfluenceBusiness Regulation in Third Countries’, Transnational Law and Governance, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3287442.

45Together with the TPP, CSR clauses are included in the annexes of labour cooperation observed in the US agreementswith Chile (2004), Peru (2009), and Colombia (2012). Peels, R., M.E. Echeverria, J. Aissi, and A. Schneide (2016) ‘CorporateSocial Responsibility in International Trade and Investment Agreements: Implications for States, Business and Workers’, ILOResearch Paper RP/013, 29 April 2016, www.ilo.org/global/research/publications/papers/WCMS_476193/lang--en/index.htm.

46The CSR clause in the TPP, even if still a soft law provision, strengthens the language from ‘should encourage’ to ‘shallendeavour to encourage’ the adoption of labour CSR initiatives by firms among the Signatory Parties. Ibid.

47Claussen, K. (2020) ‘Reimagining Trade-Plus Compliance: The Labor Story’, Journal of International Economic Law 23,25–43.

48Harrison, J., M. Barbu, L. Campling, F.C. Ebert, D. Martens, A. Marx, J. Orbie, B. Richardson, and A. Smith (2019)‘Labour Standards Provisions in EU Free Trade Agreements: Reflections on the European Commission’s Reform Agenda’,World Trade Review 18(4), 641.

49Vogt, J.S. (2015) ‘The Evolution of Labor Rights and Trade – A Transatlantic Comparison and Lessons for theTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’, Journal of International Economic Law 18, 827.



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3.1 Lessons from the CAFTA Dispute and the Innovation in the USMCA Protocol of Amendment

USMCA Article 23.5 is the key provision defining the legal grounds for the judicial enforceabilityof the provisions in USMCA Chapter 23. USMCA Article 23.5 requires that no Party shall fail to‘effectively enforce its labor laws through a sustained or recurring course of action or inaction in amanner affecting trade or investment between the Parties’. Overall, USMCA Article 23.5 mostlyreplicates the wording of TPP Article 19.5. However, the improvements reached in the Protocol ofAmendment considerably increase the clarity of its wording. More precisely, three footnotes con-siderably improve the enforceability of Article 23.5. First, footnote 10 of Article 23.5 clarifies thata ‘sustained or recurring course of action or inaction’ is “sustained” if the course of action orinaction is consistent or ongoing, and is “recurring” if the course of action or inaction occursperiodically or repeatedly’, but it excludes isolated instances or cases. Second, footnote 11 ofUSMCA Article 23.5 provides much-needed guidance in the interpretation of the link betweenaction and inaction in the enforcement of labour provisions and its impact ‘in a manner affectingtrade and investment between the Parties’.50 Finally, footnote 12 is added to the Protocol ofAmendment, shifting the burden of proof and presuming that a violation of Article 23.5 alwaysaffects trade unless proven otherwise by the responding Party.51

So far, neither a previous US PTA nor any EU PTA has ever provided any guidance on how todetermine the effect on trade of a failure to implement labour standards. The difficulties in inter-preting and proving this standard have long undermined the concrete possibility of challengingviolations of labour commitments and proving the negative impact on trade dynamics.52 It hasbeen argued that these genuinely innovative introductions and clarifications build on the conclu-sions reached in the dispute that arose between the US and Guatemala under the US–CentralAmerica (CAFTA) agreement, the only dispute thus far addressing a labour right violationunder a US PTA dispute settlement mechanism.53 This confirms the theorization of the introduc-tion of legal innovation in trade agreements that postulates that learning and innovative legal solu-tions can result from feedback from various mechanisms, in particular dispute rulings.54 The UShas been described as a leading example of a country that turned learning from trade disputes intolegal innovation in its PTAs, and the innovative features of the USCMA confirm that.

A crucial aspect of the US–CAFTA–DR–Guatemala dispute consisted in the interpretation ofthe expression ‘in a matter affecting trade between the Parties’.55 The Panel required a three-stepanalysis to prove that a violation of labour rights was ‘in a manner affecting trade’, based on the

50According to footnote 11 of USMCA Article 23.5, the impact on cross-border trade and investment for failing to complywith the labour provisions can be attributed to two separate circumstances: 1) a person or industry producing goods or sup-plying services across USMCA Parties, together with a person or industry conducting investments in the territory of theUSMCA Parties; and 2) a person or an industry that produces goods or supplies services in competition with the goodsand services of another Party.

51As resulting from the Protocol of Amendment, footnote 12 of Article 23.5 mirrors the similarly introduced footnotes inArticle 23.3 and 23.4 and specifies that ‘for purposes of dispute settlement, a panel shall presume that a failure is in a manneraffecting trade or investment between the Parties, unless the responding Party demonstrates otherwise’.

52Araujo, B.M. (2018) ‘Labour Provisions in EU and US Mega-Regional Trade Agreements: Rhetoric and Reality’,International and Comparative Law Quarterly 67(1), 238.

53The dispute was initiated by the US against Guatemala on the grounds of lack of enforcement of labour rights and wide-spread violence against workers. The Arbitration Panel concluded that even though Guatemala failed to effectively enforce itslabour laws, the failure was not ‘in a manner affecting trade’ and thus not in violation of CAFTA obligations. Compa,L. (2019) ‘Trump, Trade, and Trabajo: Renegotiating NAFTA’s Labor Accord in a Fraught Political Climate’, IndianaJournal of Global Legal Studies 26, 263.

54Gómez-Mera, L. and A. Molinari (2013) ‘Overlapping Institutions, Learning, and Dispute Initiation in Regional TradeAgreements: Evidence from South America’, International Studies Quarterly 58(2), 269. See also Morin, J.F., J. Pauwelyn, andJ. Hollway ‘The Trade Regime as a Complex Adaptive System’, 370.

55In the dispute, the US was requesting that the impact of the violation or the non-enforcement of labour rights on thecompetitive advantage should be based on an econometric analysis of the cost of non-compliance and the resulting effect onthe comparative advantage, while Guatemala was supporting the introduction of a cause–effect test. Gyanchandanib,V. (2018) ‘Soft vs Hard Governance for Labour and Environmental Commitments in Trade Agreements: Comparing the




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competitive relation in the market, on the effect of the non-enforcement of the rights on the rele-vant market, and on the competitive advantage resulting from it for a single company. Thanks tothe shift in the burden of proof in footnote 12 of USMCA Article 23.5, the complainant Party isno longer required to prove that the violation of the labour provisions had an impact on the com-petitive conditions of the market. This radically increases the chances to effectively challenge aviolation of labour rights, reducing the legal barriers to bring a claim against a government omis-sion, as it has been convincingly argued that ‘substantiating a comparative advantage to a singleforeign company on the basis of a set of highly discrete government omission is practicallyimpossible’.56 However, the shift in the burden of proof simply does not eliminate the evidentiaryand legal barriers implied in these types of labour claims under a trade-related dispute settlementmechanism, but rather simply imposes them on to the responding Party, rendering it difficult tobuild a convincing defence.

In cases of a violation of the USMCA provisions on labour protection ‘in a manner affectingtrade’ in the light of Article 23.5, the Parties have recourse to the dispute settlement detailed inUSMCA Chapter 31. Following the approach established in the May 10th Agreement and thenincluded in the TPP, Chapter 23 is subject to the same dispute settlement mechanism applicableto all other commercial disputes arising from the wording of the USMCA.57 The May 10thAgreement was a bipartisan accord reached in 2007 between the G.W. Bush administrationand Democrats in Congress that introduced influential innovation in the model of labour protec-tion in US PTAs, and was implemented in the US PTAs with Panama, Peru, and South Korea,and culminated in TPP Chapter 19.58 The May 10th Agreement asks for the addition of refer-ences to ILO standards and the prohibition from lowering labour protection, and it requiresthe same dispute settlement mechanisms to be available for other FTA obligations regarding vio-lations of labour provisions.59 Closely similar to the TPP, the USMCA provides a mix of ‘consul-tations at the ministerial level, national contact points for each country, and a standing council tofacilitate a cooperation agenda’.60 In the event of the failure to hold consultations within 30 days(set forth in Article 23.17),61 the Parties can resort to USMCA Chapter 31, which establishes abinding mechanism of state-to-state dispute settlement applicable to all disputes concerningthe interpretation and application of the USMCA provisions and violations thereof. USMCAChapter 31 includes specific provisions to address the peculiarity of disputes involving labourprotection arising from Chapter 23.62 According to Article 31.8 para. 3, for a dispute arisingunder Chapter 23 each disputing Party shall select a panellist ensuring that ‘panelists otherthan the chair shall have expertise or experience in labor law or practice’. The formation of

US and EU Approaches’, CTEI Working Papers CTEI-2018-08, 21–22, https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/296837?ln=en.

56Claussen ‘Reimagining Trade-Plus Compliance’, 12.57Similarly to the USMCA Chapter 24 on Environmental Protection.58Destler, I.M. (2007) ‘American Trade Politics in 2007: Building Bipartisan Compromise’, PIIE Policy Brief 07-5 (May

2007), Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC, www.piie.com/sites/default/files/publications/pb/pb07-5.pdf.

59Bolle, B.J. (2016) ‘Overview Of Labor Enforcement Issues in Free Trade Agreements’, Congressional Research Service,CRS Report RS22823, Report for Congress, Washington, DC, http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/492/.

60Cimino-Isaacs, C. (2016) ‘Labor Standards in the TPP’, in J.J. Schott and C. Cimino-Isaacs (eds.), Trans-PacificPartnership: An Assessment. Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 276.

61Confidential labour consultations should be initiated no later than 30 days (Article 23.17 para. 3) after the delivery of awritten request to the responding Party’s contact point (Article 23.17 para. 2). The consultations can involve independentexperts (Article 23.17 para. 4) or a request for the intervention of the relevant Ministers of the consulting Parties (Article23.17 para. 5).

62According to USMCA Article 31.8, to address the disputes arising from a violation of the USMCA agreement, the Partiesshall appoint by consensus a “roster of up to 30 individuals who are willing to serve as panelists’. For further information onthe discussion on the roster in the USMCA dispute settlement mechanism, see https://worldtradelaw.typepad.com/ielpblog/2019/03/usmca-article-318-roster.html.



https://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/296837?ln=en.



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the panellist roster under the USMCA has been described as an attempt to reform the judicialenforcement of labour rights in the CAFTA dispute adjudicated by a panel comprising onlytrade lawyers without any expertise in labour law.63

The mechanism of judicial enforcement available to penalize violations of the labour commit-ments in the USMCA represents a major improvement compared to the dispute settlement mech-anism established in the NAALC, described in the literature as one of the weaknesses in theNAALC’s architecture of labour protection.64 Wanted by the US Clinton Presidency but shapedby the political compromise at the time,65 enforcement of the NAALC relied heavily on theParties’ responsibility to enforce their own labour laws and regulations.66 The original scope ofthe NAFTA side agreement was ‘to resolve issues in a cooperative manner; thus, it providesnumerous opportunities for formal and informal cooperative consultations’,67 even includingthe possibility to trigger a NAALC dispute settlement process, requesting an Arbitration Panel,in case of the failure to hold consultations (NAALC Articles 29–41).

Moreover, the most significant achievement compared to the NAALC’s design consisted of theUSMCA’s full enforceability under a single dispute settlement mechanism of all the labour provi-sions in the agreement, in line with the achievements of the May 10th Agreement and asembodied in the TPP text.

The most distinctive feature of the NAALC was the identification of different enforcementprocedures for various categories of labour provisions. The NAALC’s 11 labour principleswere divided into three tiers: the first group (freedom of association, collective bargaining, andthe right to strike) was only open for review by the National Administrative Offices and minis-terial monitoring; the second group (covering forced labour, employment discrimination, and theprotection of migrant workers) also allowed the review by a committee of experts, without thepossibility of resorting to arbitration or penalties. Only the third group of labour principlescould benefit from a dispute settlement mechanism in the form of an arbitration panel andthe possibility of monetary retaliations. As a result, a formal dispute settlement subject to theapplication of sanctions was only allowed in the case of a Party’s ‘persistent pattern of failure… to effectively enforce its occupational safety and health, child labor or minimum wage tech-nical standards’, as stated in NAALC Article 29. The unification of all the labour commitmentsunder one dispute settlement mechanism definitively improved clarity, consistency, andtransparency in the overall enforcement of the USMCA provisions.

As emerged in the literature, the enforcement of labour rights in a formal dispute settlementis probably the most remarkable difference between the US’s ‘conditional’ approach, oftendescribed as a more stringent and coercive approach,68 if compared to the ‘promotional’approach followed by the EU in its preferential agreements.69 EU PTAs do not subject

63Compa, L. (2019) ‘Trump, Trade, and Trabajo: Renegotiating NAFTA’s Labor Accord in a Fraught Political Climate’,Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 26, 263.

64Smith, J.F., L.A. Compa, R.E. Herzstein, M.J. O’Neill, and J.F. Pérez-López (1995) ‘Panel Discussion: The Challenges andOpportunities under the NAFTA Labor Cooperation Agreement’, US–Mexico Law Journal 3, 149. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/usmexlj/vol3/iss1/16.

65Compa, L. (1994) ‘Enforcing Worker Rights under the NAFTA Labor Side Accord’, Proceedings of the Annual MeetingAmerican Society of International Law 88, 535–540.

66Bolle, M.J. (2016) ‘Overview of Labor Enforcement Issues in Free Trade Agreements, Congressional Research Service’,CRS Report RS22823, Report for Congress, Washington, DC, http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/key_workplace/492/.

67US National Administrative Office, ‘North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation: A Guide’, Bureau ofInternational Labor Affairs, US Department of Labor, Washington, DC, October 2005, www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/trade/agreements/naalcgd

68Postnikov, E. and I. Bastiaens, ‘Does Dialogue Work? The Effectiveness of Labor Standards in EU Preferential TradeAgreements’, 923–940.

69Ebert, F.C. and A. Posthuma (2011) ‘Labour Provisions in Trade Arrangements: Current Trends and Perspectives’,ILO International Institute for Labour Studies Working Paper, www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---inst/documents/publication/wcms_192807.pdf.



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sustainable and labour commitments to any form of dispute settlement, while providing a verystrong emphasis on the cooperation between the Parties to enhance labour rights and sustain-able development commitments. EU trade agreements generally rely on different types of insti-tutional cooperation mechanisms, frequently involving civil society platforms andgovernmental experts.70 The possibility of introducing a formal dispute settlement processhas been discussed in the ongoing reform process of the EU model of Trade and SustainableDevelopment Agreements and started with the 2017 non-paper of the EU Commission.71

The idea of including sanctions and a more coercive enforcement of these provisions wasexcluded in the 2018 non-paper in the absence of a consensus.72 Regarding the specific disputesettlement mechanisms available, both the CETA and the EU–Mexico Agreement provide foronly two types of dispute resolution mechanisms: consultations and the establishment of apanel of experts. Consultations should aim at achieving a mutually satisfactory resolution ofthe matter (according to CETA Article 23.9 and EU–Mexico Agreement Article 16.XY), butif this is not achieved within 90 days, both agreements allow for the possibility of establishinga panel of experts, which would issue a final report and suggest appropriate measures (accord-ing to CETA Article 23.10 and EU–Mexico Agreement Article 17.XY).

3.2 Pre-Ratification Conditionality in the USMCA of Mexico’s Specific Commitments and TheirEnforcement

In addition to judicial enforcement, the USMCA’s labour protection design adds a conditionaldimension, shaped around the TPP model of separate annexes addressing the reality of labourconditions in specific countries. One of the most distinctive features in the TPP was, in fact,the inclusion of annexes with special bilateral labour plans between the US and Vietnam,Brunei and Malaysia.73 The TPP Annexes, requiring the contracting Parties to implement domes-tic reform of labour protection as a condition for the US ratification of the agreement, have beenpraised in the literature so far as important factors for the implementation of domestic legalreforms across countries with poor labour rights records, even before the agreement’s formalentry into force.74 Due to the significant domestic impact on the Parties involved, the USmodel of pre-ratification conditionality has also been taken into consideration in the reform pro-cess of the EU model of Trade and Sustainable Development Chapters.75

Following a similar design to the TPP, the USMCA introduces Annex (23.A), specificallyfocused on the requirements of a domestic reform of the implementation of the right to collectivebargaining in Mexico. The political relevance of the Annex has taken centre stage in the discus-sion for the ratification of the USMCA in the US Congress.76 Setting up specific legal

70Gyanchandanib, V., ‘Soft vs Hard Governance for Labour and Environmental Commitments in Trade Agreements:Comparing the US and EU Approaches’, 14–15.

71EU Commission, ‘Non-paper of the Commission Services Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters in EUFree Trade Agreements (FTAs), 11 July 2017, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2017/july/tradoc_155686.pdf, as reportedin Harrison, J., M. Barbu, L. Campling, F.C. Ebert, D. Martens, A. Marx, J. Orbie, B. Richardson, and A. Smith (2019) ‘LabourStandards Provisions in EU Free Trade Agreements’, 647–648.

72European Commission, ‘Feedback and Way Forward on Improving the Implementation and Enforcement of Trade andSustainable Development Chapters in EU Free Trade Agreements’, 26 February, 2018, available at: http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2018/february/ tradoc_156618.pdf

73After the US withdrew from the TPP, these countries refused to include these bilateral plans in the new CPTTP, as theywere no longer under the US diplomatic pressure to proceed with their domestic labour law reforms.

74Vogt, J.S., ‘The Evolution of Labor Rights and Trade’, 827.75Harrison, Barbu, Campling, Ebert, Martens, Marx, Orbie, Richardson,, and Smith (2019) ‘Labour Standards Provisions

in EU Free Trade Agreements’, 649.76In particular, the effective implementation of the high labor standards by Mexico and the possibility of their enforcement

represented one of the most concerning aspects of the agreement for the US Democratic Party. Behsudi, A. and S. Rodríguez,03/13/2019, www.politico.com/story/2019/03/13/trump-nafta-democrats-1268480



http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2017/july/tradoc_155686.pdf

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2017/july/tradoc_155686.pdf

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2018/february/



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requirements, Annex 23.A prescribes a detailed reform of Mexican labour regulations to ensurethe rights of workers to collective bargaining and the freedom of organization in labour unions(Article 2(a) Annex 23.A) in accordance with Mexico’s Constitution. According to the outlinedreforms, the Mexican government is required to have an efficient and transparent system forelecting union leaders (Article 2(c)); the establishment of independent and impartial bodiesfor the election of union leaders and for the resolution of labour disputes (Article 2(b)); the revi-sion of collective bargain agreements (Article 2(f)); and full transparency and publicity of theseagreements (Article 2(g)). Moreover, this is made clear in Article 3 of Annex 23.A (b)), whichprovides that ‘it is further understood that entry into force of this Agreement may be delayeduntil such legislation becomes effective’.

To address the concerns raised in the US Congress regarding the effective enforcement ofAnnex 23.A,77 the Protocol of Amendment introduced two additional Annexes (namely 31.Aand 31.B) at the end of USMCA Chapter 31 dedicated to its dispute settlement mechanism.These Annexes establish two bilateral ‘Facility-Specific Rapid Response Labor Mechanism[s]’,applicable only to the relations between Mexico and the US (in Annex 31.A) and betweenMexico and Canada (in Annex 31.B). The Annexes set up a progressive series of responsesand enforcement mechanisms to address a ‘Denial of Rights’ for workers employed in a‘Covered Facility’ as defined in Article 31-A.15.78 According to the definitions under Articles31-A.2 and 31-B.2, the violation of the rights of free association and to collective bargainingcan qualify as a ‘Denial of Rights’, triggering this additional enforcement mechanism. For thisreason, if the inclusion of the obligations in Annex 23.A can be described as setting up the pre-ratification conditionality requirements imposed on Mexico, then the Rapid ResponseMechanisms in Annexes 31.A and 31.B represent the additional post-ratification enforcementsystems available for these obligations imposed on Mexico.

The inclusion of these two enforcement mechanisms, designed on the basis of progressive levelsof responses, represents a significant innovation in the regulatory design of US PTAs. The first stepof the Rapid Response Mechanism consists of the request to the respondent Party to conduct adomestic review and an on-site verification providing sufficient information (Articles 31-A.4 and31-B.4). If the respondent Party refuses to conduct a domestic review or if there is no agreementbetween the respondent and the complainant Parties on their findings or the remediation, thereis the possibility of requesting the establishment of a Panel (Articles 31-A.5 and 31-B.5). After hav-ing requested and conducted a verification in the respondent Party’s Covered Facility, the Panel isexpected to issue a decision within 30 days, also providing a recommendation on a course ofremediation, if requested (Articles 31-A.8 and 31-B.8). The third and final stage of the RapidResponse Mechanism involves the possibility to impose remedies, following the determination ofa Denial of Rights by the Panel. According to Articles 31-A.10 and 31-B.10, the remedies thatcould be imposed are a suspension of a preferential tariff treatment and the imposition of penaltieson the goods and services provided in the Covered Facility.

In addition, Annexes 31.A and 31.B provide the possibility of linking an action under theRapid Response Mechanism with the adjudication of a violation of labour commitments underthe Chapter 31 Dispute Settlement Mechanism. The two mechanisms are not mutually exclusive,and they can follow and enforce one another. According to Articles 31-A.12 and 31-B.12, there isthe possibility of an ‘expansion of claims’. If one Party is found in violation of Articles 23.3 and23.5 by a Panel established under Article 31.6, the complainant has two years to pursue the add-itional claims of a Denial of Rights following the procedures of the Rapid Response Mechanism,

77US Congressional Research Service, ‘USMCA: Labor Provisions’ (10 January 2020), https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF11308.pdf

78According to Article 31-A.15 ‘Definitions’, a Covered Facility is quite a broad concept, as it is intended as a ‘facility in theterritory of a Party that: (i) produces a good or supplies a service traded between the Parties; or (ii) produces a good or sup-plies a service that competes in the territory of a Party with a good or a service of the other Party, and is a facility in a PrioritySector’.



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opening the possibility to broaden the challenges to labour rights violations under USMCAChapter 23.

If the additional enforcement mechanisms introduce the possibility to effectively tackle spe-cific violations of the labour commitments agreed in Annex 23.A, the design of the RapidResponse Mechanism is surrounded by many uncertainties. First, the verifications of the facilitiesthat eventually could be required by the Panel under this mechanism could be described as ‘intru-sive’. From a legal point of view, it is unclear whether these verifications will be subject to domes-tic law and if they would have subpoena powers over relevant documentation,79 and Mexico hasalready voiced its refusal to be subject to these additional labour enforcement inspectors fromother USMCA countries.80 Very recently, Mexico has expressed serious concerns regarding theUS legislation implementing the USMCA requiring five additional US Labor Department officialsas attachés to the US Embassy in Mexico City, fearing that this implementation could be used forthe sole purpose of activating the Rapid Response Mechanism.81

More concerns have been raised on the clarity of the concept of ‘Denial of Rights’, in particularin light of the interpretation of the expression ‘under law necessary to fulfill the obligations of theother Party… under this Agreement… ’ as required in Article 31-A.2 and Article 31-B.2.82

Finally, the definition of a ‘Covered Facility’ is even more controversial, as it leaves doubts of pos-sible double standards applicable to the Parties of the Annexes. The application of the mechanismto the US is limited to the possibility of claims only with respect to the US facility covered by aNational Labor Relations Board-enforced order, while the same limitation does not apply toMexican facilities. This clearly creates a double standard between the Parties, providing a consid-erable advantage for the US as it takes between 5 and 10 years for the US National LaborRelations Board to enforce an order through a US court of appeals not having independentpower of enforcement.83

Finally, it is interesting to note that the system of institutional cooperation for monitoringcompliance with labour protection has been significantly simplified in the USMCA, if comparedto the complex institutional architecture established under the NAALC. The institutional dimen-sion of labour protection enforcement under the USMCA is developed around a system ofCooperative Labor Dialogue (defined in Article 23.13), a Labor Council (Article 23.14), andthe central role of national contact points (Article 23.11). National contact points are responsiblefor evaluating written submissions from individuals, initiating the State-to-State communicationof the Labor Dialogue, and assisting with the Labor Council’s work. The USMCA’s national con-tact points replace the National Administrative Offices (NAOs) at the core of the NAALCmechanisms of institutional cooperation and the implementation of labour provisions at adomestic level. However, contrary to the USMCA, which establishes a more unified system,each NAFTA Party had the autonomy to define the functions and the role of the NAOs, andthis resulted in considerable differences between the functions of NAOs in Canada, the US,and Mexico.84 The institutional system of State-to-State cooperation established in theUSMCA significantly simplifies the NAALC architectural design of the Commission of LaborCooperation and the functions of NAOs and of the NAALC Secretariat, which is no longer envi-saged in the USMCA. Moreover, according to the ‘Protocol Replacing the North American Free

79Hogan Lovells Publications, ‘USMCA’s Rapid-Response Labor Mechanism’, 7 February 2020, www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/usmcas-rapid-response-labor-mechanism.

80As reported in www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-usmca-seade/mexico-will-never-accept-disguised-labor-inspectors-under-usmca-foreign-minister-idUSKBN1YJ0MJ.

81However, as clarified in the USTR Responds to Mexico on USMCA Implementation, the verifications required by therapid response mechanism will only be conducted by the independent panelists, not by the labor attachés, https://mx.usem-bassy.gov/ustr-responds-to-mexico-on-usmca-implementation/.

82Hogan Lovells Publications, ‘USMCA’s rapid-response labor mechanism’, 3.83www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/enforce-orders.84Hufbauer, G.C. and J.J. Schott, NAFTA Revisited, 143.



https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/usmcas-rapid-response-labor-mechanism.

https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/usmcas-rapid-response-labor-mechanism.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-usmca-seade/mexico-will-never-accept-disguised-labor-inspectors-under-usmca-foreign-minister-idUSKBN1YJ0MJ.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-usmca-seade/mexico-will-never-accept-disguised-labor-inspectors-under-usmca-foreign-minister-idUSKBN1YJ0MJ.

https://mx.usembassy.gov/ustr-responds-to-mexico-on-usmca-implementation/



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Trade Agreement with the Agreement Between the United States of America, the United MexicanStates, and Canada’, the NAALC Secretariat will be dissolved upon the USMCA’s entry into force.Article 3 of the Protocol states that the Parties agreed that ‘upon entry into force of this Protocol,the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation, done at Mexico, Washington, and Ottawaon September 8, 9, 12, and 14, 1993 shall be terminated.

4. Conclusions and Insights from the Comparative Legal AnalysisAs stated at the beginning of this article, the scope of this work was to explore the architecture oflabour protection established in the USMCA, analysing its innovative legal features under the per-spective of its substantive labour commitments but also the enforcement mechanisms available.From the comparative legal analysis conducted in the paper, it emerges that the architecture ofthe USMCA’s system of labour protection represents a significant legal innovation to monitorlabour rights among the North American trading Parties compared to NAFTA’s architecture.However, the USMCA does not radically innovate from the regulatory achievements reachedin more recent US PTAs, particularly the TPP. Moreover, the US approach to the inclusion oflabour rights in PTAs does not seem to substantially deviate from the EU core labourcommitments achieved with the USMCA Parties.

The most significant innovative feature compared to the US PTAs ratified so far consists in therefinement of the formal state-to-state dispute settlement system and the inclusion of a new rapidresponse mechanism. This also represents the most significant departure from the ‘promotional’approach adopted in the EU model of the labour chapter in PTAs, characterized by the lack of abinding dispute settlement and by an enforcement mechanism only relying on state-to-stateconsultations.

More precisely, the considerations that can be drawn from the comparative legal analysis con-ducted between the USMCA and previously signed US PTAs and the EU agreements signed withUSMCA partners are the following:

1. The coverage of labour protection established in the USMCA does not substantially innov-ate from the scope of protection already established in other US PTAs. There is a strongsimilarity between the labour rights covered in USMCA Chapter 23 and the NAALC’s‘Labor Principles’, and the definition of the coverage in the USMCA perfectly correspondsto the scope of the TPP. It is the reference to the area of labour rights recognized in the1998 ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work that ensures the con-vergence between the USMCA and the most recent US PTAs, as well as with EU tradeagreements.

2. In terms of its core and additional substantive commitments, the wording of the USMCAseems to depart from the standards of labour protection set forth in NAFTA but does notinnovate if compared to the regulatory achievements reached in the more recent US PTAsand in the considered EU agreements with USMCA Parties.

3. The Protocol of Amendment introduces the most significant legal innovations in theUSMCA text, significantly strengthening the possibilities of accessing the dispute settle-ment mechanism in case of violations of the labour commitments. More precisely, theenforceability of the USMCA labour provisions is improved thanks to the shift in the bur-den of proof, as it clarifies that the action or inaction in the implementation of labour pro-visions will always result in an impact ‘affecting trade and investment between the Parties’unless proven otherwise by the responding Party. Moreover, the Protocol of Amendmentimposes a stronger obligation to ban imported goods produced using forced or compulsorylabour, considerably clarifying the USMCA substantive labour commitments.

4. The dimension of judicial enforcement achieved in USMCA represents a major improve-ment compared to the NAALC dispute settlement mechanism, grounded in the May 10th




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Agreement and the TPP design. The main departure from the NAFTA system consists ofthe full enforceability under a single dispute settlement mechanism of all labour provisions,widely celebrated as a significant improvement. However, contrary to what is commonlybelieved, the USMCA still establishes a difference between different labour provisions, sub-jected to different dispute settlement mechanisms. In particular, a difference is establishedbetween the labour commitments set forth in USMCA Chapter 23 and the provisionsdetailed in its Annex 23.A imposed on Mexico. If due to a violation of the provisions ofUSMCA Chapter 23 the recourse under USMCA Chapter 31 is triggered, the RapidResponse Mechanism is established to specifically enforce the obligations set forth inAnnex 23.A.

5. The conditional dimension of the enforcement of labour protection rights in the USMCArepresents a particularly innovative aspect of the agreements. Following a similar design tothe TPP’s, the USMCA introduces Annex (23.A), specifically focused on the requirementsof a domestic reform of the implementation of the right to collective bargaining in Mexico,with its own enforcement mechanism, the rapid response mechanism. However, even ifhighly innovative, the establishment of this new additional enforcement mechanism inAnnex 23.A appears to be particularly controversial, as it establishes an imbalance of rightsbetween the USMCA Parties and it is perceived as a punitive instrument by Mexico.

Outside the scope of the research conducted in this paper, it will be interesting to follow thedevelopment of future EU–US trade negotiations, in order to see if a new transatlantic agreementcould bring an innovative dimension to the regulatory architecture of labour rights in PTAs. Thelabour dimension will definitely see the clash of the two approaches towards the enforcement ofthe labour commitments and it will open up new possibilities for achieving legal innovation in thedesign of PTAs.

Cite this article: Corvaglia MA (2021). Labour Rights Protection and Its Enforcement under the USMCA: Insights from aComparative Legal Analysis. World Trade Review 20, 648–667. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474745621000239



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Labour Rights Protection and Its Enforcement Under the